Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall Part 7

"What is the figure supposed to represent, Miss Steele?" asked Helen.

"You are allowed three guesses--and then you won't know," laughed the Senior. "You can see by the stains and moss on it that the fountain has been there a great many years. Long before Briarwood Hall was a school. But it is supposed to represent either _Poesy_, or _Harmony_.

n.o.body knows--not even Mrs. Tellingham."

The bell stopped tolling with three, sharp, jerky taps. Madge Steele quickened her pace along the path and the newcomers followed her.

Other girls were pouring into the building nearest to the main structure of Briarwood. A broad stairway led up to a.s.sembly rooms; but out of the lower hall opened a large dining room, in which were ten or twelve long tables, and at which the girls were already being seated by some sort of system.

"I don't know where you will be seated," said Madge Steele, hastily.

"I am at the second Senior table. Here comes Miss Picolet. She will attend to you Infants."

"Oh, it's the little French teacher," said Helen.

Ruth met the little lady with a smile. Miss Picolet nodded to them both and put out her tiny hand. She really was no taller than Helen.

"I am glad, young ladies, to see you in such good company. Miss Steele is well worth cultivating," she said. "Come this way. You will be seated in the Junior division. It is probable that you will be placed in that grade permanently. Mrs. Tellingham will see you in her office in the next building immediately after supper."

Ruth and Helen followed the doll-like teacher to their seats. The girl whom Mary c.o.x had called "Heavy" (and, indeed, it was a most appropriate name) was already seated, and was right at Ruth's elbow.

"Oh, I hope they'll be seated soon," Ruth heard this over-plump girl murmur. "This is cup-custard night, and I'm so-o hungry."

The tables were laid nicely. There were several waitresses, and besides Miss Picolet, there were at least four other ladies whom Ruth knew must be teachers. The hall was by no means filled. There were not more than a hundred and fifty girls present. The door at the far end opened and a handsome, white-haired, pink-cheeked lady entered.

She mounted a slightly raised platform and stood for a moment overlooking the room.

"It's Mrs. Tellingham," whispered the fat girl to Ruth, seeing the question in the latter's face.

The Preceptress was a really handsome lady--perhaps forty-five, perhaps ten years older. Her perfectly white hair, thick and well arranged, seemed to have been the result of something besides age. Here face was quite free from any age-marks. There was a kind look in her eyes; a humorous expression about her mouth. Helen leaned toward Ruth and whispered:

"I know I shall just love her, Ruth--don't you?"

"And you won't be alone in that, Infant," said the girl on Helen's other hand. "Now!"

Mrs. Tellingham raised her hand. The school arose and stood quietly while she said grace. Another motion of the hand, and they sat down again. The bustle of supper then began, with the girls talking and laughing, the waitresses serving a plain, hot meal, and everybody in apparent good-nature, and happy. Ruth could scarcely pay attention to the food, however, she was so much more interested in these who were to be her school-fellows.

CHAPTER VII

THE UPEDES

It was all so new and strange to Helen and Ruth that neither had considered the possibility of homesickness. Indeed, how could they be homesick? There was too much going on at Briarwood Hall for the newcomers to think much of themselves.

The plump girl next to Ruth seemed of a friendly disposition, for when she had satisfied the first cravings of her appet.i.te--oh, long before she came to the cup-custard!--she said:

"Which are you--Cameron, or Fielding? I'm Stone--Jennie Stone."

Ruth told her their names and asked in return:

"Are you on our corridor, too? I know you are rooming in the same building as Helen and I."

"Yes," said the fat girl. "I'm in a quartette with Mary c.o.x, Lluella Fairfax and Belle Tingley. Oh, you'll see plenty of us," said Heavy.

"And I say! you're going to the Upede meeting to-night; aren't you?"

"Why--yes. Do you all belong?"

"Our quartette? Sure," said the plump girl in her off-hand way.

"We'll show you some fun. And I say!"

"Well?" asked Ruth.

"How often are they going to send you boxes from home?"

"Boxes from home?" repeated the girl from the Red Mill.

"Yes. You know, you can have 'em sent often if you keep up with your cla.s.ses and don't get too many demerits in deportment. I missed two boxes last half because of black marks. And in French and deportment, too. _That_ was Picolet's doing--mean thing!"

"I had no idea that one would be allowed to receive goodies," said Ruth, who of course expected nothing of the kind from home, but did not wish to say so.

"Well, you want to write your folks that you can receive 'em right away. A girl who gets things from home can be very popular if she wants to be. Ah! here's the custard."

Ruth had difficulty in keeping from laughing outright. She saw plainly that the nearest way to Miss Jennie Stone's heart lay through her stomach.

Meanwhile Helen had become acquainted with the girl on the other side who had called them "Infants." But she was a good-natured girl, too, and now Helen introduced her to her chum as Miss Polk. She was a dark-haired, plain-faced girl and wore eye-gla.s.ses. She was a Junior and already Helen had found she belonged to the F. C.'s.

"I guess most of the stiff and starched ones belong to that Forward Club," whispered Helen to her chum. "But the jolly ones are Upedes."

"We'll wait and see," advised Ruth.

Supper was over then and the girls all rose and strolled out of the room in parties. Ruth and Helen made their way quietly to the exit and looked for the office of the Preceptress. The large building with the tower--the original Briarwood Hall--was partly given up to recitations and lecture rooms and partly to the uses of the Tellinghams and the teachers. Besides this great building there were two dormitory buildings, the gymnasium, the library building, and a chapel which had been built only the year before by subscriptions of the graduates of the school and of the parents of the scholars then attending. But it was growing dusk now and the two friends could not see much of the buildings around the campus.

Mrs. Grace Tellingham and her husband (the Doctor never by any chance came first in anybody's mind!) had started the school some years before in a small way; but it had grown rapidly and was, as we have seen, very popular. Many girls were graduated from the inst.i.tution to the big girls' colleges, for it was, in fact, a preparatory school.

The chums went in at the broad door and saw a library at the right hand into which a tidy maid motioned them, with a smile. It was a large room, the walls masked by bookshelves, all filled so tightly that it did seem as though room for another book could not be found. But Mrs.

Tellingham was not there.

Bending over the table, however, (and it was a large, leather-covered table with a great student lamp in the center, the shade of which threw a soft glow of light in a circle upon it) was a gentleman whose shoulders were very round and who seemed to be so near-sighted that his nose must have been within an inch or so of the book which he read. He was totally unconscious of the girls' presence, and he read in a half whisper to himself, like a child conning a lesson.

Ruth and Helen looked at each other, each thinking the same question.

Could this be Doctor Tellingham, the great historian? They glanced again at the hoop-shouldered man and wondered what his countenance was like, for they could not see a feature of it as he read. But Ruth _did_ notice one most surprising fact. The stooping gentleman wore a wig. It was a brown, rather curly wig, while the fringe of natural hair all around his head was quite white--of that yellowish-white that proclaims the fact that the hair was once light brown, or sandy in color. The brown wig matched the hair at one time, without doubt; but it now looked as though two gentlemen's heads had been merged in one--the younger gentleman's being the upper half of the present apparition.

For several minutes the chums stood timidly in the room and the old gentleman went on whispering to himself, and occasionally nodding his head. But at length he looked up, and in doing this he saw the girls and revealed his own countenance.

"Ah-ha!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, and stood upright. He was not a small man, but he was very bony. He had a big, long, smoothly-shaven face, on which his beard had sprouted in patches only, and these shaven patches were gray, whereas the rest of his face was smooth and dead-white. Indeed he had so much face, and it was so bald, that if the brown wig had chanced to tumble off Ruth thought that his appearance would have been actually terrifying.

"Ah-ha!" he said again, and smiled not unkindly. The thick spectacles he wore hid his eyes, however, and to look into his big face was like looking at the white wall of a house with the windows all shuttered.

"You want something!"

He said it as though he had made a most profound discovery. Indeed, they found afterward that Doctor Tellingham always spoke as though he were p.r.o.nouncing a valedictory oration, or something quite as important as that. The doctor never could say anything lightly. His mind was given up entirely to deep subjects, and it seldom strayed from his work.